The idea for today comes from Proverbs 4:23 which says "Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." Our discussion centered on what is "your heart" and what comes from it. The "heart" reference is not to the physical thing beating in our chests but to that inner part of us which is eternal, that is our "being".
We could certainly spin this out and complicate it by contrasting soul, spirit and mind with the heart, but I think the basic idea is the same. When we love God with all of our hearts, we are doing so with all that we have and so I think it is not useful to pursue semantic nuances and apply theological weight to what is, mostly, a literary device used by various authors to convey the same idea. Can we not also say "Guard your inmost being, for it is the wellspring of life"? Indeed, I think both "heart" and "spirit" can be used as shorthand for this idea and may really be shorthand for the same thing - one a more corporeal manifestation of who we are, the other more ethereal.
Regardless, our actions are the same: Guard these things, for from them come life - but that is not all. What else comes from the heart? Here is some of what we came up with: Compassion, connection with others, discernment, faith, purity, holiness and creativity. A host of other things wells up from the heart as well and I think the more we meditate upon this, the more we will find that the heart is something well worth guarding. Who, after all, wants to muddy up the spring from which bubbles joy or faith or hope or compassion? Who would desire the hardening of that thing which drives our love for one another? No one, I would hope. Isn't our prayer for a heart of flesh and not a heart of stone?
And so we must guard our hearts and not allow them to be corrupted or hardened by the world around us. This is not an admonition to retreat from the world, but simply to move through it with caution. What we allow in is just as import as what we pour out and both are necessary.
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